Well, we've been here in the book of Matthew
for a little while, and I'm gonna do
an abbreviated sermon this morning.
Ha ha ha, that's what every pastor says, right?
Every sermon's abbreviated.
You'll find out how long by the end.
It's abbreviated though, at least page number wise.
We're in Matthew chapter seven.
We've been making our way through Matthew,
and right now we're in the greatest sermon ever preached.
Not this sermon, but the sermon that Jesus preached,
the Sermon on the Mount.
And chapter seven is where we're at, beginning in verse seven,
and the Sermon on the Mount is chapter five through seven,
so we're coming up to the end,
wrapping up our time in the Sermon on the Mount.
And we're gonna wrap up today though,
with chapter seven, verse seven, reading,
ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find,
knock and the door will be opened to you,
for everyone who asks receives,
and the one who seeks finds,
and the one who knocks the door will be opened.
Who among you, if his son asks him for bread,
will give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?
If you then who are evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Father in heaven
give good things to those who ask him?
Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you,
do also the same for them,
for this is the law and the prophets.
This is God's word.
We're gonna jump right in,
and I'll give you the first point
that I'll have you write down if you're taking notes.
Write down the sermon's heart.
We're gonna look back over the Sermon on the Mount now,
because we are coming to a bit of a conclusion.
And the context of the Sermon on the Mount
is that Jesus has been laying out this new way to be human,
this new way to live in the kingdom.
What does kingdom citizenship look like?
What does it look like to be the new humanity
created in Christ?
And so he's been laying out the ethic of the kingdom,
what it will look like.
And what we found is it's upside down.
It doesn't match what this world or society says
is good and right.
The kingdom of God is upside down.
And Jesus talked, for instance, about murder.
And he said, the law says do not murder,
but I tell you what,
don't harbor anger in your heart against your brother,
for it's the same.
There's an equalness to it to murder when we harbor anger,
because at the root, murder may be the external action,
but something was behind that action.
And Jesus is wanting to get at that.
The heart of the sermon is really about getting
beyond the external compliance to the inward holiness
that Jesus desires.
At this time, there were Pharisees,
and Pharisees were a group of people in the first century
who cared deeply about obedience to the law,
the law and the prophets being the Old Testament,
the Torah, and they cared really deeply about obeying
each of the laws that were laid out there,
at least in an external way.
And so what they would do is they would line their life up
and they would try to meet the requirements of every law.
So if you had to do this, they would do it.
If you were prohibited from doing this,
they wouldn't do it, right?
And what they really focused on was that external compliance.
How do I look right on the outside?
And Jesus comes along in Matthew five through seven,
and he says, no, real righteousness is rooted
in spiritually reborn hearts
that naturally produce God-pleasing actions.
You guys know the idea of the good tree produces what?
Good fruit.
And the bad tree produces bad fruit.
And so Jesus comes along and says,
cool about the external compliance, that's great,
but you've missed something.
You didn't go deep enough.
You didn't get to the heart of the matter
or the spiritual heart of the matter.
You didn't get to the heart of the matter.
You didn't get to the heart of the matter
or the spiritually reborn heart
that naturally produces the God-pleasing actions
on the outside.
And so in just a quick little Bible nerding out here,
in Hebrew literature or in Hebrew sermons,
the center of a teaching is significant.
So if I laid out the whole teaching of the Sermon on the Mount
in linear fashion, beginning to end,
it would be constructed in a way
that you would look to the center of the teaching
to find the main thrust or the point of the message.
We typically do some sort of story crescendo
toward the back half right.
Or if it's a book nowadays,
basically within the first few pages,
I can tell you what the book's about.
And I put it down before the middle of the thing
and never finish it.
I've got so many books that I haven't made halfway through
because I can guess the rest of it easily.
But in their stories or in their literature
or their preaching, the main point,
the thrust would be right there in the center
and everything would reverberate out from it.
And so the idea was that you keep circling back around
on this truth and you let it permeate your heart
and you meditate on it.
And when you get to the end, you go back to the beginning
and then you get to the center
and you see how it all fills out the meaning of the teaching.
And so you might say the sermon on the mount
laid out in front of us, it had an introduction.
And the introduction was the Beatitudes,
blessed are the poor in spirit, right?
That was the introduction.
But after the introduction,
to get into the main body of teaching or the center section,
the sermon began that portion of it in verse 17
of chapter five with these words.
Don't think that I came to abolish the law or the prophet.
I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
For truly I tell you until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter
will pass away from the law
until all things are accomplished.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands
and teaches others to do the same
will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
But whoever does and teaches these commands
will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
For I tell you that I will not let you
and for I tell you unless your righteousness
surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.
And so there's the intro,
the Beatitudes in the surrounding scripture.
And then at 17, Matthew 17 begins this center section,
the main body.
And it begins with him saying,
I didn't come to abolish the law,
but I came to fill it full of meaning.
To fill it full.
I didn't come to say, hey, it doesn't matter.
You're free from the law, don't worry about it.
But to fill the meaning of the law full
so that we got at the heart of the matter
of what the law was talking about.
And then Jesus goes on to say,
if your righteousness though
doesn't surpass the righteousness
of those who are concerned
about the external compliance alone,
then you'll never make it into the kingdom of heaven.
And that means that simply cleaning up the outside,
obeying the law on the outside
is not sufficient to get you into the kingdom of heaven.
It is sufficient to get you looking like a Christian
on the outside, at least for a time.
But it's not sufficient to get you
into the kingdom of heaven.
And Jesus says, you need a greater righteousness.
You need a greater righteousness
than simply cleaning up your life and obeying the law.
And what is a greater righteousness?
What does that even mean?
What does righteousness mean?
And I would hold out something like this,
a holistic God-centered way of living.
And why do I say holistic?
A holistic God-centered way of living.
It means inner alignment with God's will.
Or you might break it down to motive, thought and action.
Holistic, all of them.
The external cleaning up, the external circumstances,
the external cleaning up of a person,
well, that's just action.
But a holistic God-centered way of living
is motive, thought and action.
Because I don't know, you guys know this, right?
There's a whole lot that makes up our life
than just what's on the outside, yes?
Your thought life alone.
I was talking to someone before who has the gift
and the strength of ideation.
And we were talking about at night, right?
You lay down and it's like, oh, I'm ready to go to bed.
And two or three hours later,
you've gone through a thousand ideas
and you put them all out, you're ready to go.
You're ideating, ideating, ideating,
ideating, ideating, ideating.
We didn't see any of that.
That was a part of your life that we never saw.
A God-centered way of living
is in our alignment with God's will,
motive, thought and action.
That's righteousness.
That's what the greater righteousness looks like
that Jesus is calling.
God-pleasing, kingdom-seeking heart.
And then he says, well, all that stuff
that everyone tries to do,
the kind of external compliance to the law,
all that stuff comes naturally
when you have motive and thought in order,
action flows naturally out,
the fruit of a heart in alignment.
But some try to bypass that
and only work on the surface-deep external compliance.
And so you have the greater righteousness required
at the beginning of the center portion of the sermon.
You have the introduction, the beatitudes.
You have the beginning of the center portion,
which is you need a greater righteousness.
And at the end of the center portion,
before we get to the conclusion,
which we'll launch into next week,
one of our servant leaders, Nick,
is gonna be preaching next week,
leading us into the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount.
Right before that, the thing that turns
or transitions us into the conclusion
are the words of verse 12 that we read,
known as the golden rule.
Therefore, and the therefore is not just about
what's right before it in the passage,
it's all the way back to verse 17 of chapter five,
the center section.
Therefore, all of the things we've talked about,
murder and anger and judgment and prayer and fasting,
everything we've talked about,
therefore, whatever you want others to do for you,
do also the same for them,
for this is the law and the prophets.
This is the law filled full of meaning.
Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy said,
actions do not emerge from nowhere.
They faithfully reveal what is in the heart.
And this, Lord's, we covered it for a while
because we broke down the Lord's Prayer in detail,
but if you go the beginning, the introduction,
Beatitudes, the center section,
verse 17 of chapter five to verse 12 of chapter seven,
and then the conclusion to the end,
what is in the center of the center?
In other words, what is this all centering around?
And that is the Lord's Prayer.
The Lord's Prayer is at the center of the center
of the Sermon on the Mount,
and what is at the center of the center of the center?
Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy,
your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
The center of the center of the center
is your kingdom come and your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
In other words, nothing in the Sermon can stand alone.
Nothing in the Sermon can be plucked out
and said, oh, just live this principle
and you'll be a good person,
or live this way and you'll be righteous,
unless it all is in context and all centered around
God's kingdom and his will being done.
And the truth is, this prayer, the Lord's Prayer,
your kingdom come, your will be done,
this is not a prayer that atheists are praying.
This is not a prayer that agnostics are praying.
No, this is a prayer that only the transformed,
new created kingdom citizens pray,
because they're the ones seeking his kingdom and his will.
And so we end with verse 12,
therefore, whatever you want others to do for you,
do also the same for them,
for this is the law and the prophets.
That is, the heart of the Sermon is a God-centered,
holistic way of living.
Your kingdom come, your will be done.
If you're taking notes, the second thing
I'll have you write down is the Sermon summary.
Do unto others.
This isn't a catch-all phrase.
This isn't a one size fits all morality rule.
Some have tried to reduce it
to some oversimplified social code.
I've read a bunch of articles this week
in preparation for this,
and one of the things that struck me
is that a lot of people say,
you know, the golden rule is outdated.
The golden rule cannot apply,
because in a pluralistic society,
in a culture like we are, your truth is not my truth.
And so what you want done for you or to you
is not what I want done for me or to me,
and so we need to move beyond the golden rule.
And so it's interesting that beyond the golden rule,
they have come up with what's called the platinum rule.
You know, one up Jesus here.
Platinum rule.
And here's the platinum rule.
Put on your discerning ears here
and tell me if this sounds good and right.
So the platinum rule is,
treat others the way that they wanna be treated.
Could you imagine if I applied that rule to my kids?
Dad, I wanna do 20 more hours of buttons today.
That's how I wanna be treated, right?
I wanna be addressed as master and commander.
You will from now on, yes, master and commander,
whatever you want.
The platinum rule, which outdoes the golden rule.
And that's because they're trying to take it
and use it as some sort of morality rule,
one size fits all.
Hey, you can apply it to anything and it works,
but you cannot detach the golden rule
from the rest of Jesus's teachings.
The golden rule is centered on your kingdom come,
your will be done, not my will.
And so you can't pluck it out and try to use it.
Hey, let's give it to an atheist
and they'll employ this and they'll live a righteous life.
No, no, because it's centered on the kingdom of God
and the will of God advancing.
And what the truth is, the golden rule is not good
if it's relying only on what I want for myself either,
because sometimes I don't want good things for myself.
And if I then impose that on other people,
I might mistreat them and be quite unloving to them
if I give them what I want for myself.
And so what we need is to be reshaped and reoriented.
Our wants need to be recreated or reborn
to be the kind of wants and desires
that are in line with God and his will and his kingdom.
And want is an interesting word in there.
It says, as a part of that passage,
whatever you want others to do for you,
do also the same for them.
The word want, it traces its origin
all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
It's a word that could be translated want or will or desire.
And that Greek word in the Greek Septuagint
shows up in the Garden of Eden.
It's there when Eve is deceived by the serpent
and she looks at the tree and the fruit on the tree
and it looks desirable.
In other words, she wants it.
She wants the fruit that God commanded not to eat of.
She wants it.
And so that word shows up and I think as a reader
of the Sermon on the Mount is supposed to draw us back
to going, hey, not all wants are holy.
Not all wants are righteous.
Which wants are we talking about here?
And to say, wait a sec, we don't want those wants.
And then that word appears again
twice in the Sermon on the Mount.
Once in verse 12 where it says,
whatever you want others to do for you,
do also the same for them.
And the second place that it appears
in the Sermon on the Mount is in the word
when it says, your kingdom come, your will be done.
Will is the same word as want and desire.
The same word that's used at the end,
the same word that's used in the Garden of Eden
in the Septuagint in the Greek.
It's the same word and so it's supposed to,
as we're reading the Bible, draw our minds
and start to piece this together and meditate
on these different kinds of wants
and some of them didn't turn out very well.
But we also want God's will or God's want to be done.
And this is one of the exciting parts
about the Sermon on the Mount.
It's that Jesus is showing us a better way
to live, a better way to want, a better thing to desire.
He's inviting us in to live a life centered
on God's will and desire, a life that orients
around God's will and desire in his kingdom
and to let our minds and our hearts be transformed by that.
There was a time when Jesus was asked
in an attempt to kind of corner him
and get something on him, get some dirt on him.
He was asked by one of the Pharisees,
a teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?
Listen to Jesus' answer.
He said, love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and most important command,
but I'm gonna give you more.
The second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.
All the law and prophets depend on these two commands.
And don't get hung up on, what does he mean by depend?
Here and over there, he said, that is the law and prophets.
And then sometimes he says, hangs on,
these all mean the same thing.
These are the heart or the principle of the law and commands.
What is it?
Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Have a holistic God-centered desire.
But you can't ignore the other side of the coin.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Same coin, two sides.
And so he couldn't say, there's only one command,
that's all you have to do for the rest of your life.
Truth is, the Pharisee would have walked away going,
cool, doing it.
But it was the second command that he said
is glued right to that first command,
which is that out of the love that you have for God
and the orientation that you have around him,
you are going to begin to see the fruits of love
show up in the way that you treat other people.
And you will not be able to help it.
You must orient first around God,
but you're going to see that you are going
to love your neighbor.
And part of the process God's gonna lead you through
is that he's gonna show you who your neighbor is
and it's gonna be much broader than you thought it was
as the parable of the good Samaritan showed, right?
What a wacky parable, right?
I just would have loved to be there.
That would have been so awesome.
Because in the end, the Samaritan's a good person.
He's talking to Jews and that would have been wild
because the Samaritans and Jews just did not get along.
They hated each other and were constantly bickering
in that war with each other.
And then he uses this parable to say,
the Samaritan understood what it meant to love his neighbor.
And so he will wildly reshape who you think your neighbor is
and who you are obligated in Christ to love.
But don't think you can get there on your own
or that you can somehow work your way to that love.
It starts with re-centering and reorienting your life
around God and his will.
You have to pray that prayer, the Lord's Prayer.
Your kingdom come, your will be done
because my will is sure fighting against it all the time.
Reorienting around you.
But something else that's interesting about
also the golden rule is that Jesus,
while wise, infinitely, he was not the first one
to say it.
It shows up hundreds of years before him,
both in the positive and the negative.
Now, most of the ones around his time
were written in the negative,
which makes sense why he put it in the positive.
The negative went something like this.
Don't do to others what you yourself hate.
And this was talked about in Jewish rabbinical circles.
Don't do to others what you yourself hate, right?
Which is, hey, don't harm people.
Don't harm people.
But notice that it doesn't have a proactive element to it.
It's just refrain from doing things
that other people will hate because you don't like it.
But Jesus twists it and turns it and says, basically,
oh no, the kind of love I'm calling you to,
the kind of doing I'm calling you to is proactive.
It's actively seeking the good of others.
It's getting into their business to do good,
to work for their advantage,
to see the kingdom of God,
and God's will break into their lives and change things.
Friends, God's love is always in tangible ways
through his people.
It shows up in people's lives.
John Stott said, the golden rule is the distillation
of Jesus' teaching about love.
It is no exaggeration to say that it is the pinnacle
and summary of his ethical command.
And yet it has to be centered on all of Jesus' teachings.
It cannot be plucked out.
I'm gonna invite the worship team to come
and join me on stage as I move to the third point
and as we aim toward wrapping up our service today.
But if you're taking notes,
the third point is the sermon's practice.
The sermon's practice,
what it means to live out the life
that Jesus has been laying out
in Matthew chapter five through seven.
And again, we're gonna get to the conclusion of the sermon.
Next week, Nick will start us into that process.
Looking forward to hearing his message next week.
Sorry, I got in your way.
Ha ha, I don't know where to go.
And the truth is, at the core of Jesus' teaching
throughout the Sermon on the Mount,
the core of it is the people of God
imitating God in his character.
It's us being like our dad.
Be like your dad.
When it comes to the way you treat others,
be like your dad.
When it comes to the way that you think,
think in a way that is honoring to your Father in heaven.
When it comes, remember, like,
he is present.
He is there in your thought life.
He is there in your motivation.
He sees your motivations.
You can't do a righteous act from an unholy motivation
and get away with it.
You can't get away with it.
You can't pull it over on God.
There's no game you can play.
He's there and present.
And so the people of God imitating God and his character,
this is what it means to live out the kingdom life.
And so I'll ask you a few questions.
Has he loved you when you were seemingly unlovable?
Yes?
Let's raise our hands.
Boast in our weakness so we can boast in his strength.
Yes, he has loved us when we were seemingly unlovable.
And so love the unlovable in that way.
That's what it means.
Has he provided for your every need, not your wants,
not your calculations on a page,
but has he been faithful to provide for your every need?
Amen?
Amen.
Then provide for the needs of others
because you may well be God's hand
in their life.
Look like your father.
When you were an enemy of God,
when you had rejected the cross and rejected salvation,
when you gave no attention to it,
when you wanted nothing to do with Christ,
did Christ seek you out?
And seek out your enemy and love them.
Be like your Savior.
Be like God.
You know, when Jesus was persecuted
and he was put on the cross after being spat upon
and whipped and beaten,
didn't he pray for his persecutors?
Do you wanna destroy your persecutors
or do you wanna pray for your persecutors?
Or do you wanna pray for your persecutors?
Be like your father.
Be like God.
Walk in the righteousness.
Center your life around his righteousness, his will.
See what he's doing and do it.
Has God ever lied to you?
And don't lie to your fellow man.
Has God ever been unfaithful to you?
That husbands don't be unfaithful to your wife
and wives don't be unfaithful to your husband.
Be like your father.
Reflect his goodness.
We are invited to surround our wills and our wants
and to surrender our wills and our wants
and to live life according to God's will
and his desire at the center of our life
and his desire at the center of our life.
And we're called to live as images
of his righteousness here on earth
so that others might see our God,
see our Lord and savior in our lives
and in the way that we act toward one another
and the way that we behave
and they might turn to him and be saved.
Listen, sometimes we can think that this whole idea,
what we're talking about or sanctification
or personal holiness or whatever,
like that's like, hey guys, hold on a second.
I got some personal business I need to take care of with God.
And then let's get back to that church fun stuff.
Woo!
But I got some personal stuff to take care of with God.
It's all the same stuff.
It's the Christian life.
It's lived together in all of our messiness
as we've heard, right?
It's lived together and we're shaped together
and it's your love of me that can change me.
It's your deferring or your charity of your neighbor
or your brother that might cause them to seek after God
because they were loved in such a way.
It's the community of believers
in the way that they live among one another
and in the community that people begin to go,
what is going on over there?
I want to know what, how do I get in?
How do I be a part of that?
Jesus came to seek and save the lost.
It is said that God desires that none should perish
but that all would come to saving knowledge.
And this isn't just some personal morality
but this is gospel kingdom work.
This is how God draws.
This is how God provides.
This is how God saves through his church,
through his people.
If you're waiting for some miracle to happen,
you're the miracle.
And your life centered and oriented on Christ,
you'll begin to see fruit pop out
and you'll begin to see fruit pop out.
You're like, where did that come from?
That is not who I used to be.
And people will take notice of it
and it will encourage them.
It'll be used by God to draw people to himself.
It'll be your generosity because of the generosity of God
will be used to provide for other people.
And the mercy that you give, the forgiveness that you give
may well draw someone to an understanding
of the mercy and grace that God is offering them
and they might surrender their life and be saved
all because we lived it out.
We were like our father.
That's the heart, I think, of the golden rule
centered around Christ's teaching.
Will you pray with me?
Father, I pray that we would be those people,
that we would be who you have designed us to be,
who you have created us in Christ to be,
who you have, the purpose of our new heart
is to live the new life of the kingdom
and to live it out in a bold, unashamed way
with one another in the communities we live,
the people outside this door
so that they might see and be drawn.
I pray, Lord, that you would help us by your grace to do it.
We cannot do it and yet we know that if we are in Christ,
we are a new creation and the old is gone
and the new has come and you are doing this work in us.
And so we can walk boldly into it.
We can step in faith into the calling
that you have placed on our lives
without fear that you won't meet us there.
So Lord, I pray that if there be any hint
of the old self left lingering in our lives,
you would crucify it today.
Put it to death, Lord.
Anything that is weighing us down or holding us back
or tying us down or tethering us to the old way of life
that did not bring about your glory,
did not bring about your righteousness,
was not centered on you,
I pray that you would put it to death in our lives
so that we could live into the glorious freedom
in which you have brought us as children of God
and we can live out of that freedom to your glory,
to your fame, for the good of others.
Lord, I pray if there is anyone in this room
who has got a stingy heart,
they see that they're obsessed with self-ism,
they're self-centered or self-sufficient
or they just can't get over themselves.
I pray that you would break that in their heart.
Their heart would be flooded with compassion, joy,
kindness, love for their fellow brother and sister.
And that generosity, whether financially or anything, time,
whatever it is that they would be a generous person
willing to open up and give of themselves.
Lord, I pray that you would do these things
and by your word that you would shape and mold us,
we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.